


Baby, you could be my Robbin' Hood

by gremlins-came-and-got-me (Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Human, Cop Erica, Criminal Stiles Stilinski, Derek doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, FBI Boyd, FBI Lydia Martin, Lawyer Laura Hale, M/M, Pining Derek, cop isaac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-10 23:02:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark/pseuds/gremlins-came-and-got-me
Summary: It starts on a Monday afternoon.





	Baby, you could be my Robbin' Hood

**Author's Note:**

> For the Sterek Writing Room's August Theme.
> 
> (Thank you to my group for being so enthusiastic to read this piece.)
> 
> All typos and plot holes are mine.

It starts on a Monday afternoon.

Derek is busy with meetings all day and has little time to do more than run from one office to another, papers crammed (neatly) into folders, paper clips adorning the tops of contract after contract.

Sometimes, Derek really hates being his sister’s glorified secretary.

Of course, Laura usually thanks him by letting him have Tuesday off so that he can recuperate from all the haggling he is subject to immediately before and after the contracts are signed.

Today though, Derek doesn’t know what’s going on. One minute he was handing Robinson a fresh-off-the-printer updated health insurance policy and the next minute five unknown persons surrounded him and frog-marched him down to street level.

Out in the late afternoon sunshine, Derek blinks at the people around him. He thinks he might be dealing with two different factions. The obvious leader, a short-statured, well-dressed redheaded woman with immaculate make-up, her second, a large man in a tiny suit, the two beat cops (twin blondes with equally devilish grins), and what appears to be a private investigator, a brunette with a fiery gaze and a set mouth.

“Make sure you get his blood,” the brunette says right before Tiny Suit heaves Derek into the back of a NYPD squad car.

“My blood?” Derek asks. He can see Laura arguing with the redhead. He looks at Cop 1, the woman. She snaps her gum at him. “What do you need with my blood? Where are you taking me?”

He thinks they explained everything upstairs, but it was a little hard to hear over the pounding of his heart.

Suddenly, the door next to him opens and Laura slides in.

“What about work?” Derek asks. Who will make sure Robinson signs the contract this time, he means.

“Shut up,” Laura hisses. Which probably means their uncle Peter who works in the accounting department will handle it.

Cop 2 leans against the still-open door. “Hey, Hale?” he says, and Derek points at himself. “You’re under arrest for armed robbery.”

Derek gapes at him. Armed robbery? He cuts a quick glance to Laura, but her face is stony and gives nothing away.

Cop 2 continues, spouting the spiel of the Miranda Rights. “Of course, I’ll just repeat them to you at the Precinct and have you sign something if you understand them,” he says, pausing before fixing Derek with a determined glare. “You do understand them as they have been read to you?”

Derek looks to Laura again and she gives him a sharp nod.

“Yes,” Derek croaks. “I understand.”

The coffee is bitter and tastes more like bad tap water than anything else. Derek still drinks it, his throat bobbing with the effort of forcing the tepid liquid down his esophagus.

Laura has been doing most of the talking, allowing Derek a few select sentences, like describing what he does (“Gofer,” he mumbles. “Assistant,” Laura corrects).

When the redhead (Agent Martin) asks him how much he is paid in a year, Derek shrugs and says, “It varies.”

Laura shoots him a stink-eye for that, and he shrugs. It _does_ vary. Some years, his take-home pay is right about $52 grand. Other years, he earns significantly less. Depends on if he’s working for his sister or not (there’s a reason she keeps rehiring him).

“What am I supposed to have stolen?” he asks Laura the minute they are left alone. Laura massages her temples.

“Jesus Christ, Derek, weren’t you listening? They think you’re stealing from me!”

Derek barks a startled laugh. “Is this because I work for you?” he asks. “Why would they think that?”

Laura shakes her head. “I don’t know why they zeroed in on you. Remember those financial reports I met with Peter over about six weeks ago?”

Derek nods. He remembers. He was the one who’d had to run down the last quarterly reports for the past seven years. Thank God Laura keeps everything. Unfortunately, the filing had been left to Derek’s replacement in one of the years he was trying to find himself backpacking across the West Coast and the files were in such disarray that he complained and threatened to quit no less than thirteen times.

In the end, the contents of the meeting hadn’t been shared with him, and Derek had thought the matter resolved.

Apparently not.

“Someone is embezzling money from our company, siphoning it off overseas and then rerouting it back to the USA. The puzzling part is that all the funds are being laundered through legitimate corporations and then distributed to at least a dozen shelters and clinics.”

“And I’m the prime suspect?” Derek stares down at his shaking hands. “Do you think I’d do that?” He doesn’t look up, too afraid to see the disgust and anger on his sister’s face. “I’ll resign and you’ll never have to see me again,” he continues.

Laura grabs his hand and squeezes. “I know you,” she says, sounding angry. “I know you wouldn’t do something like this. As much as you have a bleeding heart, you wouldn’t hurt your family.” Laura sighs, and Derek finally looks at her. “The armed robbery charge is from a jewelry heist at the same time as our first missing money. The thief left a bloodied thumbprint on the glass case he smashed.”

“Is that why she wanted my blood?” Derek murmurs, thinking of the private investigator. He wonders where she went.

Laura nods. “Yeah. They’re going to take a sample soon. Derek, you have an alibi for that day, I know you do. It was a Tuesday, about a year ago.”

Derek shrugs. He doesn’t remember what he was doing a year ago. Probably boxing. He only recently gave it up again (about six months after his hand wouldn’t heal when he kept punching things) to go work for Laura. Or maybe it was when he was working at a gallery as the acquirer of up-and-coming artists’ work (which he worked at for two weeks before being approached to box).

“I would have to know the specific date,” he says.

“June 18 last year.”

Oh. Derek feels oddly sick. “That day?” he asks in a small voice. Laura nods, looking worried.

“I was busy,” he says. “I had a date and then ended up going to the hospital when I got cut at the restaurant. The guy never called me back.”

“Who was it?” Laura demands. “Maybe I can track him down, see if he remembers that day too.”

Derek shrugs. He wants to sink low in his seat. He doesn’t know if the man remembers him, but he knows he’ll never forget Stiles Stilinski.

It’s almost 3:00 in the morning by the time Laura finagles his release. And the only reason they didn’t have to wait to be booked and then released due to lack of evidence on both counts is that Laura threatened to have Senator Whittemore, an old friend from college, call.

Derek never liked Jackson, thinking him too arrogant and selfish, but he just might have to send him a gift basket since he’s currently taking his shoes off in his apartment while Laura bustles around in his kitchen instead of trying to sleep in the holding cell at the Precinct.

Cop 1 (Officer Reyes) had been the one to pull a little blood from him, a background in paramedic-ing before going into the academy, and she’d smirked at his wince. Derek called her a vampire to Laura and at least it made her laugh a little.

Derek is exhausted and he’s glad that tomorrow is Tuesday and he doesn’t have to go to work. Laura does though, so he doesn’t know what she’s up to when she comes back with a freshly opened bottle of Chardonnay and two glasses.

“Tell me about your date,” she demands as she pours a healthy amount into the first glass. She hands it to him and then pours another liberal drop into the second glass. She sets the bottle on his modern-art coffee table and kicks off her heels.

Derek sighs. Quick like a bandage. Besides, as his lawyer, it’s Laura’s duty to help him.  “Do you remember that coffee shop I was obsessed with for a couple of years, _The Coffee Drop_?”

He was mostly obsessed with the barista rather than the actual coffee, which was terrible, now that he thinks about it.

“Yes, I think so,” Laura says, sipping at her wine.

“It closed a few months before my date.” Probably because of the terrible coffee. “Anyway, Stiles, my date, worked as a barista there before it closed.”

“How did you meet him again?” Laura asks. Derek pretends he doesn’t notice her setting down her wine and pulling out her phone. He only hopes that she’s taking notes and not actually recording him.

“We bumped into each other,” Derek replies. “Literally. I was heading for the gym and he was going…wherever he was going. We started talking again, and I asked him if he’d like to go for a quick bite.”

That quick bite had lasted all of thirty minutes before the searing pain in his palm ended their date with Stiles disappearing into the crowd while Derek was bundled into a cab by a well-meaning bystander.

Derek hadn’t even gotten Stiles’ number, so it feels ridiculous to still be hung up on sparkling brown eyes, a quick smile, dry wit, and a grace so natural it only looked like gangly-ness.

Derek doesn’t even realize that he’s stopped talking until Laura clears her throat.

“So, you haven’t seen him since that day?” she asks, disappointed. He shakes his head. “You can’t even contact him?” Again, Derek shakes his head. Laura gets a determined glint in her eyes. “Think you’d be willing to sit down with a sketch artist?”

“Do you think he’ll help with my alibi?” Derek asks, eyeing Laura. She hums thoughtfully as she picks up her glass again.

“Couldn’t hurt,” is all she says. Then she drains her glass, kisses his cheek, and steals his bed.

Derek sighs, tossing and turning on his couch for most of the rest of the night. He’s still awake when he hears Laura’s alarm go off at 6:30, but he’s asleep before she’s out of the shower.

Laura calls Derek into the office at 2:00 in the afternoon. As soon as he arrives, she shoves him into her office and leaves to meet with Peter in accounting.

Inside the office is the sketch artist, a woman named Kira Yukimura.

Derek shakes her hand and tries to calm his nerves as he sinks into one of the two seats in front of Laura’s desk. Kira is already in the other. She has a large pad of unlined paper and a set of charcoal pencils with her as well as a tablet and electronic pen.

“We’ll start with the paper,” Kira says, flipping to an empty page. She takes a moment to gather her long hair and pull it into a ponytail tied off with a piece of string that she had wrapped around her wrist. “I like to start with eyes.”

So Derek describes Stiles’ eyes. By the time a couple of hours have passed, Kira has a decent likeness of Stiles on her pad. She’s exceptionally good at catching how he looks when he’s just about to laugh.

After a short break to stretch their legs and drink some of Laura’s secret stash of coffee, Kira grabs the pad.

“Coloring?” she asks once she has the sketched drawing on the screen. Derek closes his eyes and starts talking.

When he finally runs out of words, he opens his eyes to find Kira staring at him with a sympathetic expression.

“You really love him, huh?” she says softly, the voice of one who knows that pain. Derek nods wordlessly, reaching out to pat her hand in solidarity.

“Anyway,” she continues, brightly. “Ta-da!”

It definitely looks like Stiles.

Derek pulls his hand back before he can do something stupid like touch the screen and mess up Kira’s hard work. “That’s him,” he says, although Kira already knew that. “What happens now?”

“Now I send this image to the NYPD and they start looking into locating him. Once they do that, then they’ll talk to him and see if he can corroborate your alibi.” Kira packs her things away slowly. After a long moment, she launches herself at Derek and hugs him tightly. “For your sake,” she whispers in his ear, “I hope he does.”

Then she’s gone, and Derek just sits there.

Laura finds him an hour or so later and instead of chastising him for drinking her coffee, she wraps him in a hug and rubs his back like she used to do when he was little and not feeling well.

“It’ll be okay,” she says. Derek doesn’t know if she’s trying to convince him or herself. It doesn’t seem to work either way. “Kira’s the best in the business. If the NYPD can’t find Stiles, it’s on them, not you.”

Derek traces the scar he got from that night a year ago. “It sure seems to be on me,” he says before getting up to leave.

It takes a week to find Stiles.

During that time, Derek goes to work, does his job, goes home, and doesn’t drink the bottles of wine Laura and Peter keep dropping off for him.

He keeps his head down and his nose clean, as his dad used to say. It still doesn’t matter, and as soon as the police have Stiles in custody, Laura drags him down to the Precinct so that they can get his statement added to the growing list of evidence Laura is privy to as Derek’s attorney.

Officer Reyes and Cop 2 (Officer Lahey) stop them before they can enter. “We need to talk to your client,” Reyes says. “Alone.”

Derek shares a look with Laura, who laughs in her face.

“You are never meeting with my client unless I’m present,” she says. “Anything you want to say to him can be said only in my hearing.”

Reyes rolls her eyes. “Fine. Blood results came back. We’re formally arresting your client for armed robbery.”

“What?” Derek asks. He turns to Laura, but she looks just as helpless as he feels.

“DNA matched,” Lahey says. “Turns out your client has a penchant for knocking over jewelry stores.”

Derek feels the handcuffs closing around his wrists, but he can’t quite believe it. “What about Stiles?” he asks his sister.

“Yes,” she says. “What about the man you are questioning? Hasn’t he cleared up my brother’s alibi yet?”

“Why don’t you go talk to Agent Martin,” Lahey suggests. “We have to book your brother in the meantime.”

Derek’s head spins as he’s walked down a short hallway to another room where a bored-looking officer with a slack face unlocks one wrist at a time to roughly press his fingers into an ink pad and then roll them on a sheet of paper marked with boxes and text. Fingerprinting. He’s being fingerprinted.

Then, he’s shoved against a wall with a series of heights marked on it, a placard handed to him.

“Face front,” the slack-faced officer intones, clicking a button. The flash blinds Derek and he blinks until the spots fade. “Turn left.” Someone, probably Lahey, turns Derek and the camera flashes again. “Right.” He’s moved right and the camera flashes a final time.

He’s being arrested. Numbly, Derek hands the placard back to the slack-faced officer. Lahey reattaches the cuffs and then marches him forward again until he can push Derek into a cell. The door locks behind him, and Lahey motions him to turn around.

The cuffs are removed, and Derek moves to the bunk to sit, rubbing at his wrists. He hopes that Laura can get him out of here soon. He stares down at his inked hands, willing himself not to cry. It’s not the end of the world. They’re still talking to Stiles. Stiles can clear this all up.

That is, if he remembers Derek.

Laura calls Jackson Whittemore and has him stop by the Precinct when even after Stiles confirms the fact that he and Derek went on a date (“Pseudo date,” Laura relays to Derek when she comes to spring him) and the officers still won’t let him go.

“DNA doesn’t lie,” Reyes seems fond of saying.

“It does if it’s planted,” Laura snaps. At least it shuts Reyes up.

But, it does open a door in Derek’s mind. What if he’s being framed? He knows he didn’t rob that jewelry store. He’d spent that Tuesday doing as he usually did, going to the gym to meet with his trainer. He had had a match in a week and was nervous because it would be his first fight without protective headgear. Then he bumped into Stiles, finagled a date with him, went about his training, and then sat down to deep dish pizza at _Sal’s_. And then his hand got cut (Derek still doesn’t know how. Reyes suggests that it’s from the glass case the thief smashed when the clerks didn’t open it fast enough).

Laura says there’s two things odd about the bloody print. The first is that the police entirely missed it on their first examination even though it was on the front of the case, in a very obvious position. The second is that it looks like it was stamped on.

“Stamped on how?” Derek asks.

“It’s like someone dipped your thumb in blood and pressed it very precisely to the glass. There were no other smears and no drops of blood around the case. It’s very odd.”

Very odd to Senator Whittemore means he threatens a few jobs and rattles the precinct enough that Laura is able to take Derek home (after a judge, dragged away from an engaging poker night, determines that Derek can be released on his own recognizance as long as someone takes responsibility for him until he’s due back for the preliminary of his trial since he lives alone and all and there are no ankle monitors available and Derek still hasn’t officially been arraigned).

Derek sighs. His head hurts and he still feels numb from the handcuffs.

When Laura drops him off at his apartment, he realizes that Peter must have drawn the short straw because he’s sitting on Derek’s couch drinking some of the wine he brought earlier.

Derek accepts a single glass and mulls over it all night, wondering exactly how his print, his blood, made it to a building he’s never stepped foot inside in his entire life.

The next morning, Agents Martin and Boyd come knocking on his door. Peter hisses and growls with his hangover while Derek puts a kettle on to boil for tea. He washes the glasses and rinses out the emptied wine bottles Peter drank last night while Martin and Boyd sit at his kitchen table and spread out pictures of the smashed glass case and his lone print.

“Your lawyer brought up an interesting point yesterday,” Martin says, accepting the Earl Grey Derek offers her. Boyd, in a slightly larger suit than the last time Derek saw him, declines. Derek sits at the table with them and sips at his tea.

“The fact that the print wasn’t there the first time?” Derek asks. He fumbles his cell phone onto the table and presses Laura’s speed dial. He doesn’t press send yet, waiting for Martin to nod.

“Now, we could say that it was just shoddy police work, but the print wasn’t discovered until the next morning when the crime scene crew went through, looking for any additional evidence that may have been hidden.” She pulls out another picture and lays it next to the glass case.

Derek stares at it. One has the print. The other does not. The dates on the pictures indicate that the photo without the print was taken first. Which means…

“It was planted,” he breathes.

“What was planted?” Peter asks, leaning over Derek to glance at the pictures. “Ah,” he says. “So you think my nephew was framed?” He steals Derek’s tea and moves to a corner to lurk.

Martin hesitates. “I did not say that,” she finally says. “But,” she admits, “it is an increasingly likely possibility.” She looks at Peter before turning back to Derek. “If you would like to call your lawyer, I have a few questions for you.”

Derek presses send.

Laura comes flying through the door in fifteen minutes. Derek knows for a fact that she lives at least a half an hour away. He doesn’t say anything though, and hands her a bottle of water.

Agents Martin and Boyd are still sitting at the kitchen table, and they both accept the sandwiches Derek offers. Peter is lying on the couch moaning miserably about the alcoholic content of wine (“Wine, Derek,” he says beseechingly. “Whine indeed,” Derek retorts).

“What’s going on? Why are you here? Who said you could talk to my client without me?” Derek shoves a sandwich at Laura and makes her sit down. Then, he drags in the footstool he rescued from a random street corner on his way back from the West Coast. He’s now a whole head and shoulders shorter than the others and it’s difficult to see the pictures on the table, but he’s looked his fill. He doesn’t need to see more.

“We have a few questions for your client,” Martin says. “We wanted to wait until you could be here before we began.”

Laura deflates a little and bites off the corner of her sandwich. She chews slowly and deliberately before swallowing. “Ask away. I’m sure you realize that I will be dictating what he does and does not answer.”

“Always,” Boyd says drily. He digs into his jacket pocket and produces a small electronic recorder. “Tuesday, July 16, 2025 11:45 a.m. At Derek Hale’s apartment. Present are Agents Martin and Boyd, Derek, Laura, and Peter Hale.” Boyd sets the recorder in the middle of the table.

“First question, Derek,” Martin says. “What day did you go on a date with Stiles Stilinski?”

Laura places her hand on Derek’s shoulder and squeezes gently. This is her signal to let him know it’s okay to answer. If she doesn’t want him to say anything, she’ll lean down and hiss in his ear. “Tuesday, June 18, 2024,” he replies easily.

“And at what time did you meet with him?”

“To discuss the date or the actual date?” Derek asks.

“Both.”

“The actual date was at 7:00 p.m. I ran into him at around 1:00 p.m. and discussed the possibility of a date.”

“And where were you when you ran into him at 1:00 p.m.?”

Derek pauses, frowning. It was near the old coffee shop Stiles used to work at. Halfway between Derek’s apartment and his gym. He opens his mouth and then realizes that Laura is hissing in his ear. He turns to her and she shakes her head. He’s confused. This could prove beyond a doubt that he didn’t rob the jewelry store. Why doesn’t she want him to answer?

“A moment,” Laura says, standing up. Derek stands up too and she heads for the bathroom. Once inside, Laura leans close to him and says, “I think Stiles robbed that store and framed you.”

Shocked, Derek pulls back. Stiles? Barista Stiles who was nothing but kind and flirtatious whenever Derek stopped by _The Coffee Drop_?

“I think Agent Martin knows or suspects Stiles and that’s why she let you go so easily yesterday.”

“I thought you pulled in a favor with Whittemore?” Derek is so lost.

Laura shakes her head. “Turns out Whittemore and Martin are boning. He had no intention of helping you get out of there. As it was, I accidentally let it slip about the bloody print last night and Martin jumped on it.” Laura scratches at the back of her head, messing up her neat ponytail. “Also, apparently there were a few more strings of robberies when you were running up and down the opposite coast and I was able to prove that with phone logs and postcards.”

“I’m not a suspect?” Derek asks.

“I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

“So why don’t you want me to tell them about where I met Stiles before our date?”

“Think about it, Derek.” Laura clenches her hands in frustration. “That bastard already framed you once. I think that’s why he went after my company, because he could use you as a scapegoat again. If you tell Martin and Boyd where you met Stiles before your date, who do you think Stiles is going to think told them?”

“Me?” Derek guesses. Only it’s not a guess. Not in the slightest. “He’s the reason my hand started bleeding at dinner and why my boxing career never took off.” He’d had to back out of the match when his hand hadn’t healed in time.

“Exactly.”

“So what do you want me to tell them?”

“Let them draw their own conclusions. You can say that you don’t remember right now, but they probably won’t buy it.”

“Should we get back to the meeting now?” Derek opens the door and stalks back to his seat. He waits for Laura to sit down before he says, “I met Stiles just outside of where _The Coffee Drop_ used to be.”

“Derek!” Laura growls, but Martin and Boyd both nod.

“We thought so,” Martin says. “You see, there was a camera on _Roselyn_ , the boutique that took over the space _The Coffee Drop_ used to occupy. They have a security camera aimed near the crosswalk in front of the store, and they store their videos for five years just in case something happens. We were able to pull up video of you and Stiles Stilinski meeting by that crosswalk.”

“We think he deliberately targeted you,” Boyd adds. “Any idea why?”

Derek shrugs. “I’m a familiar face? I used to go to _The Coffee Drop_ all the time. And it wasn’t for the coffee.”

“I think that’s all the questions we have for today,” Martin says. Boyd begins packing away all the photographs. “We will be in touch if we need anything further. You’ve been a great help. Good luck.” Martin and then Boyd reach across the table and shake hands with both Derek and Laura.

Derek shows them out and then turns to find Laura and Peter both standing at the kitchen doorway, arms crossed.

“Don’t tell me,” Peter says, his smile cold and sardonic, “you’re still in love with him.” He scoffs and pushes past Derek, letting the door slam behind him.

Laura shakes with restrained fury.

“I don’t,” Derek says softly. “I don’t still love him. If they suspect him and catch him because I told them, then isn’t that a good thing?”

Laura deflates and holds out her arms for a hug. Derek lets himself be pulled into it.

Maybe in time he’ll be able to believe his own lie, because right now, even though Stiles framed him, almost got him sent to jail over a crime he never committed, and stole from his sister who already does as much humanitarian work as the company can afford, Derek still, inexplicably, wants to see him again.

Months later, after all the headlines have run about how the Great Mieczysław “Stiles” Stilinski, a Modern Day Robin Hood, has been caught and trial proceedings are beginning, Derek runs into none other than Stiles Stilinski himself.

He looks well, Derek thinks, eyes running up and down Stiles’ lean form. He’s wearing a dark turtleneck and his hair has grown out from the buzz cut he was rocking at their almost-a-date a year and a half ago.

Derek stops him with a hand on his chest, and Stiles recoils slightly.

“Whoa, dude,” he says. “Just appear out of nowhere, eh?” Derek smirks.

He can see the edge of the tracking anklet Stiles has to wear while he awaits his trial.

Derek feels lucky that all he had to do was be fingerprinted and hold that placard. He even got a small apology (if a four pack of muffins from Starbucks could be considered an apology) from Reyes and Lahey.

Stiles is getting the full workup, and though he deserves it, Derek does still feel a twinge of something closely resembling affection in his chest.

“They never told me your motive,” he says, and Stiles startles.

“What motive?”

Derek tilts his head and catches sight of _Roselyn_ ’s sign. He grabs Stiles’ wrist and tugs him into the alley where there aren’t any cameras. Thankfully, Stiles doesn’t fight him.

Once they are out of sight, Derek leans closer. “Why did you frame me?” he asks.

Stiles blinks at him, and Derek can see him weighing his options: tell the truth or lie. Derek hopes he doesn’t get the lie.

“I just thought you needed some excitement in your life,” Stiles mumbles. Which is probably enough of the truth. Stiles always told him how boring his job as Laura’s gofer (assistant) sounded. It was why Derek kept changing jobs.

“Excitement?” Derek repeats. He knows his eyebrows are as high as they can go, but he still tries to raise them higher. “Excitement? By framing me for your crimes and having me arrested? _That_ excitement?”

Sheepishly, Stiles nods.

Derek sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “No thank you. I don’t need excitement like that. In fact, my life is perfect when I’m not being accused of stealing money from my sister.”

Stiles’ eyes widen. “Hale?” he says weakly. “Your name is Hale?”

Derek eyes him. “Yes,” he finally says. “Derek Hale.” He sticks his hand out, unsurprised when Stiles ignores it. “I’d say it’s a pleasure,” Derek begins. He doesn’t finish. Because as much as he wants to deny it, meeting Stiles again has been a pleasure and will always be one.

Stiles swallows hard. “I’m sorry?” he says, strangled. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble with your sister.”

“But you meant to steal from her all along.” Derek sighs. Why he expected something different, he doesn’t know.

“It’s not like it was hurting anyone,” Stiles says. “Your sister, she’s big in the business. She gets all the contracts, does all the payouts. She’s a multibillion dollar company. She could spare a little for the underdogs.”

“Laura does nothing but spare for the underdogs,” Derek snaps. “She calls me a bleeding heart because I can’t walk past someone in need and not help a little but she’s the one setting up scholarships all over the country for at-risk kids to attend schools. She’s established at least four women’s shelters and one men’s shelter for victims of abuse. Yes, the money you took from her went toward similar causes, but she’s not just sitting on people’s money. She’s investing in the future and not out of some misguided attempt to make the world a better place by robbing the rich and giving to the poor.”

Stiles stands there and listens and blanches further. Derek shakes his head. His goal wasn’t to make Stiles feel guilty; he just wanted to point out that Stiles _was_ hurting people.

God damn his heart, though, Derek still knows he wants Stiles, and it makes him disgusted with himself. This is the man who stole from his sister. This man framed him for his crimes. Derek has a scar on his palm from this man.

Derek still wants to kiss him.

Eventually, after a long, long silence, Stiles says, “Look, can you just forget that you ever knew me?” He turns to go, and Derek thinks he probably should let him do that.

He doesn’t want to.

“What if I don’t want to do that?” Derek asks. Stiles stutters to a stop. Derek rubs at the back of his neck, trying not to blush. “I’ve kind of been in love with you for three years.”

“Kind of?” Stiles asks, sounding shocked.

Derek nods. “It’s why I always came by _The Coffee Drop_.”

Stiles flushes. “Yeah?” he says, breathy. Derek frowns at him.

“It was terrible coffee and great company. That’s why I asked you on a date when I finally ran into you again.”

“Even though I stole money from your sister?”

“To be fair, that was before I knew you’d done that.”

“And now?”

Derek shrugs. “And now I want to get to know you better, to see just how deep it goes, your desire to help people.”

Stiles smiles. “This has nothing to do with the fact that Agents Martin and Boyd finally got some of those charges to stick and that I might be going to prison while you are exonerated?”

“Nope.” Derek smiles. “It has everything to do with you.”

“You know, your sister might not approve of you dating a criminal, especially one that stole from her.”

Derek steps closer to Stiles, backing him against the wall and caging him with his arms. “I think she’ll get over it.”

Then, finally, he kisses Stiles.

 

~ The End ~

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I'm stuck at work for 9 hours and there's no Internet (I work in a job that requires Internet access or I can't really do my job).


End file.
